PARENTAL PERCEPTION OF FAMILY STRESS IN PEDIATRIC HEALTH CRISIS: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY.
Contributors: University of Minnesota.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 159
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Sociology, Individual and Family Studies.; Sociology, Theory and Methods.
Description: The purpose of this study was to investigate parental meaning following admission of a child to a pediatric intensive care unit. A three-stage contextual analysis procedure, which integrates the holistic and contextual perspectives of the experience into Colaizzi's phenomenological approach, was used for the study. Analysis of the parents' perception identifies the parents' awareness of the family dynamics and relationships under conditions of stress during their child's critical illness. Using this approach there was evidence that a family level stress perception (FSP) could be studied from parents' reports of the whole family experience.

The data used in this study were collected from 10 randomly chosen families from the Family Impact of Catastrophic Childhood Illness Project (FIC) during a critical care hospitalization of their child (Tomlinson & Kirschbaum, 1988). The data were collected when the children were in critical condition during early hospitalization. The interviews followed a semi-structured schedule, and three major questions related to FSP were used for analysis in this study.

The results of the analysis found that the essence of FSP is multidimensional and consists of four organizing concepts: initial boundary ambiguity, parents' coping patterns, family resources, and the functioning of the family boundary. The results show that family stress perception is a holistic phenomenon and the essence of each organizing concept represents its unique dynamic characteristics. The results of this study not only represent a way to use the phenomenological approach to develop nursing knowledge, but also to support and extend the accumulated knowledge of family stress under these conditions necessary for nursing intervention.

Recommendations for future studies include a longitudinal study with the sick child to get a more comprehensive picture of family experiences and experimental studies to test methods of assisting the family system during critical care.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-09, Section: B, page: 4603.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 1993.

School code: 0130.